


Cycle

by UnseenMisfit



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: An attempt was kind of made, I have no delusions about this being good, I kind of gave up halfway through, Lazy use of capitol sentences, POV First Person, POV Miss Pauling, Respawn tampering, and it shows, oh well, time jumps
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-26
Updated: 2017-09-26
Packaged: 2019-01-05 16:21:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12193410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnseenMisfit/pseuds/UnseenMisfit
Summary: Miss Pauling is called into work on her one day off. After this happening so often, one would think she'd get used to it.





	Cycle

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this, what, a year ago? Just finished it a few minutes ago. I wasn't keen on the idea of it just sitting there unfinished, feels a bit like a sneeze you try to keep form happening. So here, have this awful rushed mess. Yay apathy.

Ah, my one day off a year. The day that I can go home, sit around, relax with a good book, and not have to worry about being called in to pull tongues out of people or nails out of fingers. Usually. Every other year I had been left in peace, I guess I was overdue to be called in on my day off. As one can imagine, I was quite disgruntled when I went in to grab my mission. I doubted I would even get a compensation for this; it was always ‘Ms. Pauline do this, do that, we need you here, clean up this mess!’. With a sigh of unhappiness I started walking out to my motorcycle, flipping open the folder I’d been given for the mission.

When I saw what was written, my blood went cold.

________________________________________

I had seen some horrible scenes in my time working for Mann.co of course. I had once gotten the job of pulling all the teeth out of heads to try and find a transmitter chip embedded in one. Another time I needed to shoot a man in the kneecaps and then push him over a bridge to make it look like a suicide. Yet another time I had been given the pleasant job of slitting the throats of fifteen men, women, and children who were all involved in the failure of an experiment.

But this took the cake.

There was no way of telling the blood from the scraps of clothing that lay on the ground. Bits and pieces of flesh and sometimes even brains were smeared on the walls of the Red Team base. Or what was left of the base at least.

I had to take inventory here. Find anything in the bodies that the morticians weren’t meant to see. My first stop was a crumpled heap in the corner.

________________________________________

“-and then BONK! Right in the noggin and th’ frog was outa the park!”

“Listen, we all heard this story more than ten times now, mate. We’ve all killed a spy one time or anotha’.”

“Pfft, yer just jealous, Snipes!”

Sniper just rolled his eyes at the boy. He’d learned that after that statement any further comments would only bring about more stories on how Scout had ‘decimated’ one of the enemies. It wasn’t all that impressive. When both you and your opponent simply respawned during fights, any kill was only another tally in a box somewhere that few paid any attention to. Right now said respawn machine was being checked over by Engineer, so that meant they had to stay in the base. No respawn machine, no respawn at all. Thankfully that just gave the RED team a chance to wind down and clean their weapons. The day was coming to a close, and there hadn’t been so much as a peep from BLU. Sniper guessed that their counterparts were just as happy for the break.

A quick look through the barrel of his rifle confirmed to Sniper that he had cleaned it thoroughly enough, and he started putting it back together. Scout was just eating a chocolate bar and bugging the Aussie; not much to clean when your only weapons are a baseball bat and a shotgun.

Speaking of him, Scout had started jabbering on about something else in the two seconds of blissful silence Sniper had been enjoying. He continued to ignore him as he put the pieces back in place.

Something caught his attention though. A flicker of movement, just barely glimpsed between the blackout curtains. “What in the…” Sniper muttered, standing up to go to the window and look out. He saw nothing, but there was definitely still a sound. A low hissing, like there was a leak somewhere. It was hard to tell with the droning of the youngest member in the background.

“Shut up.”

“That’s rude, I was just gettin to the good par-!”

“Shut UP.”

The tone of his voice managed to get the Scout to snap his jaw shut, eyebrows tensing together in confusion. What could possibly be so important as to interrupt his story of the one time he had taken out the other team’s Heavy?

Sniper listened to the wall, moving around until his ear was pressed up against the wall just to the side of the window. Odd, that sounded an awful lot like…

His eyes widened and he jumped away from the wall.

“GET DOWN!”

Scout jumped up and bolted without a second thought, but Sniper wasn’t nearly fast enough. An ear-splitting boom filled the base.

________________________________________

I took a shuddering breath as I looked under the burned hat that had somehow managed to stay on Sniper’s head. His right arm had been blown off, along with half of his torso which was now located on the far side of the room. His gun was still mostly in pieces with different part of it scattered around. 

For a minute I focused on his corpse, trying to find anything strange on him. I found nothing.

“Alright… where’s the next corpse?”

One of the others on the scene lead me to the hallway, though it looked more like a shooting range now. It was a bullet-hole hell, blood splattering the floor, walls, and ceiling. The somehow functioning ceiling fan spun lazily with one blade barely hanging on. Laying in the broken remains of bone and flesh was a once-white lab coat, one mockingly pristine corner swaying gently in the fan’s breeze.

________________________________________

The echo of the boom shook the entire base. Medic looked up from his cup of coffee, one eyebrow raising. Odd, usually Demo was passed out at this time of night. Maybe Pyro had lit a match in the Scotsman's room again? The German doctor sighed and shook his head, going to sit down at the table. This team was truly a wreck.

Medic had hardly taken a sip out of his coffee when Scout came barreling through the kitchen, shouting at the top of his lungs.

“WE’RE UNDER ATTACK! GETCHER ASSES UP!!!”

Medic watched the boy go with both eyebrows now raised. What in the world…?

When it registered, his eyebrows shot up and his eyes went wide. The explosion wasn’t from any member of the team then, not even Scout would pull that kind of joke on the team. Immediately the doctor grabbed his bone saw, ready to follow Scout in warning the others. He already heard the others starting to stir, Heavy’s footsteps pounding down the corridor, no doubt with Sasha in his arms. For once Medic was glad that the Russian had an obsession with keeping his beloved minigun close at hand. If he and Heavy could just get to the medical quarters, then he could easily hold the attackers off long enough for the rest of the team to assemble. The thought made the doctor smirk. Respawn down or not, Heavy and he would still make an excellent combination.

With this thought in mind, Medic started rushing towards where Heavy’s room was. But he frowned, steps faltering. The footfalls were coming from the wrong direction; Heavy’s room was further down the way that Scout had been going. This sound was very clearly coming from the direction of the explosion.

The sound of a minigun whirring to life in the hall behind him made the doctor’s throat dry up.

________________________________________

I fished through the pockets of the coat, finding a few barely legible notes, some neatly packaged syringes, and a packet of bird seed. I put it all in my bag along with the bone saw with a mental note to feed Archimedes if the bird was still alive.

“The rest of the bodies we managed to find were together, Miss Pauline” one of the men said to me. I stood up and wiped some blood off on my pants. At least that would cut down on the amount of time I’d have to be here. I wasn’t sure how long I could keep up my composure. Seeing people you didn’t know dead was one thing, seeing people you knew well and had spent time with massacred was another deal entirely.

One more death breath in and out. “Alright, show them to me. Let’s get this done before anyone else arrives.”

________________________________________

The cut off screams of the German doctor spurred Scout’s feet impossibly faster, increased his volume ever louder. He yelled at every door he passed, trying to warn everyone.

Everything passed by in a blur of adrenaline and terror, but somehow everyone ended up in the respawn room. It had been Engie’s idea, really; he’d shouted over the intercom to protect the respawn machine. He was almost done working on it, he needed time to put it back together if they wanted to have any chance at surviving this.

Time. That’s all they needed, just a little bit of time. They could do that. They could handle it.

Everyone was set up and ready. Pyro was giggling and shuffling on their feet next to the door, mimicking Scout’s frantic motions for them to shut up. The moment anyone came through that door, it was his job to light them up. Demo had drunkenly strewn sticky bombs all over the entrance as well to ensure none of the first wave would get through, Soldier’s rocket launcher aimed squarely at the door, Heavy’s minigun spinning steadily in its heat up, Spy calmly loading his pistol and checking his butterfly knife. They were all scattered around the room behind any cover they could find, though the objective was clear from their positions. They were all protecting Engie, who was hunched underneath the respawn console, fiddling with wires to put it all back together.

It was eerily quiet, everything silent after Medic’s screams had cut off. It didn’t feel right. It was as though the building itself were holding its breath.

Scout got up and started pacing. The door was closed and guarded, and it was the only way into the respawn room. He couldn’t stay still with all that was happening. It felt wrong to be so helpless, to be cornered like rabbits as they waited desperately for the respawn to start working again so they would have a fighting chance. “Damnit it damn it damn it!” he hissed angrily, stalking over to a pile of Engie’s discarded equipment.

“Arent’cha almost done with that thing?!” he snapped at Engineer, who didn’t give him any response. Instead, Soldier piped up from under his metal helmet. “You watch your insubordinate tongue, maggot!”

“Aye fuck ya too!”

Scout kicked a piece of scrap metal, causing the entire pile to shift. He was about to turn away to start kicking something else when a bit of red fabric caught his eye. A frown found its way deeper onto Scout’s face as he knelt down to examine the find closer.

“There we go, yer all set” came Engie’s voice from the other side of the room. “So we can fight, yes?” Heavy asked hopefully, eyeing the respawn doors for any sign of his doctor friend. “Well, not quite there partner, best to hold your horses.”

Scout moved a few pieces of metal out of the way, heart dropping more into his stomach when a shattered pair of goggles clattered out from the mess, a bit of congealed blood oozing from between a piece of a turret and a pipe. “Uh, guys…” Scout said, turning back in alarm.

“Ya see, I’m just here to make sure…” Engineer’s body wavered as the ‘Texan’ crept up behind Heavy. “That you don’t have a chance.”

The team started turning towards the now french accent. Heavy wasn’t fast enough.

The sound of the large Russian’s body hitting the floor was concealed by the sounds of explosives ripping the door off its hinges.

________________________________________

In and out. Deep breaths. I climbed onto the seat of my motorcycle numbly, hands gripping my helmet tight enough for my knuckles to go white under the gloves. This wasn’t supposed to happen. The teams weren’t allowed to go into each other’s bases outside of scheduled fights. It was an unspoken rule to never tamper with the enemy respawn machines.

My bag weighed heavily around my shoulder. Within hours the place would be cleaned and rebuilt as though nothing had ever happened. Any trace of the nine people would be eradicated, their deaths explained away to families by someone higher up than me. The BLU team would be taken somewhere that I didn’t know about, and either come back or disappear. Then more people would show up in red uniforms.

My jaw relaxed as I closed my eyes and started up my motorcycle. There was nothing she could do to change it now. They were dead and it was too late for any respawn machine to pull them back. Their deaths had become as final as could be.

You’d think after five times, I’d get used to this cycle.

**Author's Note:**

> Was this really worth reading? I don't even think it was worth writing. Oh well, there it is now.


End file.
